Conferences can be intimidating for even the most seasoned researchers, let alone first-time attendees. Below are some tips—a list of what not to do at conferences and what to do instead—that we have put together from our experiences as graduate student conference attendees.

Don’t fill every time slot with an activity. Instead, give yourself time to rest. Conference burnout is real!

Don’t stay in every night. Instead, attend section special receptions and dinners.

Don’t only mingle with people you know. Instead, reach out to faculty who inspire you in advance via email and plan to meet for coffee. In our experiences, professors are more than willing to meet with students during conferences.

Don’t drone on and on about your dissertation. Instead, practice your elevator pitch before the conference.

Don’t only attend sessions in your subfield. Instead, attend sessions on topics that interest you but are different from those you study.

Don’t sweat it if you can’t book a room at the conference hotel. Staying at the conference hotel is preferred, but if that doesn’t work out, stay in an Airbnb in a quirky nearby neighborhood.

Don’t carry around the paper program. Instead, utilize the ASA app to help you keep track of talks and events you want to attend. To download the app, click here.

Don’t forget to enjoy the city. Instead, explore famous landmarks, do touristy things, and eat local cuisine. For some ideas on things to do in Philadelphia, click here.

Don’t wear uncomfortable shoes. Or if you do, make sure to keep a comfortable pair in your bag for foot emergencies.

Don’t worry if you are worried. Conferences can be anxiety-provoking experiences, especially if you are a graduate student who is attending for the first time. It’s perfectly normal to feel awkward, anxious, or stressed…everyone feels this way at points during a conference.

​What steps can parents, teachers, and students take to reduce the risks of a mass shooting in their community?

The most important thing community members can do is report any suspicious or concerning behavior or statements to law enforcement. Although many people are familiar with the Department of Homeland Security’s campaign “If You See Something, Say Something,” they often assume that it primarily applies to the behavior of strangers. In reality, you are far more likely to see warning signs among your family, friends, or acquaintances, because you spend so much more time with them, and they are more likely to let their guard down and reveal their thoughts or plans when they are with people they know.

What is the clearest sign that someone may be at-risk of committing a mass shooting?

Many people do not realize that public mass shooters often openly admit that they are interested in committing a mass shooting before they actually attack. In 2002, a joint study of school shooters by the United States Secret Service and the United States Department of Education (DOE) found that in 81% of cases, “at least one person had information that the attacker was thinking about or planning the school attack,” and, in 59% of cases, more than one person knew about the impending attack. In these cases, the person who knew was almost always a peer, friend, or family member. This should not be surprising, given that mass shooters are often suicidal, and previous research has similarly shown that approximately 80% of suicidal people tell someone what they are planning in advance. But it is extremely important not to dismiss these statements as “jokes” or solely attention-seeking behavior, because they may be our best chance to prevent a mass shooting.

Although the Secret Service/DOE study is now 16 years old, its findings are just as applicable today as they were in the past, and apply to all types of public mass shooters, not only those who attack at schools. The 2015 Charleston church shooting, 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, and 2018 Parkland school shooting are just a few of many recent examples where offenders made explicit admissions that they were interested in committing an attack. This information may be revealed in face-to-face conversations, text messages, social media posts, or other forms of communication.

What other warning signs should people be looking for?

In a recent journal article, I identified three major warning signs: (1) suicidal motives or life indifference, (2) perceived victimization, and (3) desires for attention or fame. School shooters, workplace shooters, and other public mass shooters (including those who claim terrorist motives) often want or expect to die, feel like they have been profoundly mistreated or disrespected by others, and hope to gain fame or notoriety through their attacks. However, these factors are not always easy for observers to recognize in advance, so in the article I provide detailed checklists with specific things to look out for. If anyone would like a copy of the article, they can request one here.

If I report someone who seems dangerous, will that person be arrested or committed to a psychiatric facility?

There are many potential outcomes from reporting people who are at risk of harming themselves or others, and in most cases, they do not involve arrest or institutionalization. Depending on the laws where you live, it is possible that the person you report will be prohibited from possessing or purchasing firearms, which significantly reduces the risks to the community. And sometimes reporting someone actually leads to an improvement in that person’s life, through counseling or other positive interventions.

If I report someone to a teacher, administrator, boss, or law enforcement officer, does my responsibility end there?

Unfortunately, there have been many cases where members of the public have done their part by reporting suspicious or concerning behavior, but that information was not taken seriously enough to prevent the attack. The Parkland school shooting was just the most recent example of this disturbing trend. After you “see something” and “say something,” you should continue to pay attention to make sure that the authorities have responded appropriately. Ask follow-up questions about their response, if necessary.

If the potential threat has not been sufficiently addressed, you may be able to put pressure on the teacher, administrator, boss, or law enforcement officer by reminding them that you have documentation that you brought your concerns to them, and that if something tragic happens, they will be directly responsible for not doing their due diligence. If they still continue to dismiss your concerns, you can contact me directly for further advice or assistance.

Adam Lankford is Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at The University of Alabama. Prior to becoming a faculty member at The University of Alabama, Lankford helped coordinate Senior Executive Anti-Terrorism Forums for high-ranking foreign military and security personnel in conjunction with the U.S. State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance program. He conducts research on many types of social deviance and criminal behavior, including mass murder, mass shootings, and terrorism. He is the author of two books,The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers (published in 2013) and Human Killing Machines: Systematic Indoctrination in Iran, Nazi Germany, Al Qaeda, and Abu Ghraib (first published in 2009), as well as numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, Lankford has been interviewed many times by a variety of news outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, BBC World News,The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, NPR, and BBC Radio. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Justice, Law & Society from American University and his B.A. in English from Haverford College.

]]>Mon, 05 Mar 2018 16:00:26 GMThttp://childrenandyouth.weebly.com/home/renew-andor-gift-a-membership-to-the-section-on-children-and-youthIt's that time of year! Please don't forget to renew your membership to the Section, and consider gifting a membership to a student or colleague. Student memberships are $6, and $14 for regular members.

Here's a friendly guide on how to gift a membership:

GIFT MEMBERSHIP INSTRUCTIONS

ASA members can gift an ASA membership for students or section memberships for any membership type at https://asa.enoah.com (Login required).

To purchase a gift ASA membership for studentsOnce logged into the member portal, please click “Purchase a gift membership for a student” under the Contribute/Give heading. Students can be searched by name through the online member database. A new contact record can be created by the member if the student is not found in the database.

Your gift will be redeemable by the recipient for a ASA student membership (or a $51 discount on another membership type). Your gift recipient will receive their gift credit via email immediately after your purchase. Gift memberships are not refundable if unredeemed by the end of the 2018 membership year, September 30, 2018. Gift memberships are not tax deductible.

The deadline for a 2018 gift ASA membership for students is July 31, 2018.

To purchase a gift section membershipOnce logged into the member portal, please click “Purchase a gift section membership” under the Contribute/Give heading. Select the section and search for your recipient by name. Section membership requires 2018 ASA membership. Only 2018 ASA members who do not already have a membership in that section are eligible to receive a gift. Your recipient will receive an e-mail immediately after your payment notifying them of the section gift. (Your name will be included in this message). If the recipient declines the gift within 30 days of receipt, you will receive a refund by mail. Gifts are not tax deductible.

The deadline for a 2018 gift section membership additions is July 31, 2018.]]>Tue, 12 Dec 2017 15:46:42 GMThttp://childrenandyouth.weebly.com/home/webinar-for-section-members-helping-journalists-interpret-and-use-your-research-associate-professor-amy-schaletMost of us conduct academic research hoping that we can have a positive impact on society. Yet our scholarly writings reach only limited audiences.One way to engage publics beyond the academy is by sharing our research with members of the media.Yet, our academic training rarely prepares us to speak with journalists in a way that is effective and satisfying.

​In this webinar, Amy Schalet discusses some of the “rules of the game” of interacting with the media, providing tips on preparing for and conducting an effective media interview, and discussing differences between writing for academics and popular audiences. Amy has written op-eds for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Huffington Post. She has appeared on CNN, and she has been interviewed by over fifty journalists across different print, radio, and new media outlets.This webinar will present highlights from her chapter: “The Media: Helping Journalists Interpret and Use your Research” published in Making Research Matter: A Psychologist’s Guide to Public Engagement (Linda Tropp, ed.) out from the American Psychological Association inNovember, 2017.

This award honors individuals for distinguished contributions to research and teaching on the sociology of children and youth. Candidates must have received their PhD within the six calendar years prior to the nomination deadline (no later than 2012). Nominees must be current members of the American Sociological Association (ASA). While not a requirement, we encourage nominees to become members of ASA's Section on Children and Youth. Self-nominations are appropriate. To make a nomination, write a letter briefly stating why the person should be considered and submit with a copy of their CV to the committee chair, Grace Kao, at g.kao@yale.edu. The deadline is March 1, 2018.

This award recognizes an outstanding paper authored by one or more graduate students. In addition to recognition at our annual reception at the ASA meetings, the winner(s) will receive a cash award of $250. To qualify for this year’s competition, the author and any co-authors must have been students at the time that the paper was written. A paper is eligible if it made a “public appearance” in 2016-2017, defined as one of the following: 1) having been submitted for a class or seminar held in those years, 2) having been presented at a professional meeting in those years, or 3) having been accepted for publication or published in those years. Nominees must be current members of the American Sociological Association (ASA). While not required, we encourage nominees to become members of ASA's Section on Children and Youth and to consider posting a version of their paper on Socarxiv. If the winner posted their paper to Socarxiv by March 1, 2018, Socarxiv will award the winning student paper an additional $250; however, the choice whether to post to Socarxiv or not is entirely up to the student and should be made in consultation with mentors. Finally, self-nominations are strongly encouraged. To make a nomination, write a letter briefly stating why the paper should be considered and submit with a copy of the publication to the Committee Chair, Anna Mueller, at amueller@uchicago.edu by March 1, 2018.

​This award is given in odd years to an article and in even years to a book published in the preceding two years that has had a major impact on the field of Children and Youth. Books under consideration for the 2018 award should have been published in 2016-2017. Self-nominations are appropriate. Nominees must be current members of the American Sociological Association (ASA). In addition, a single author or one of the coauthors must be a member of ASA's Section on Children and Youth.

Please email a letter of nomination with a brief description of the book to the committee chair at kellyba@bgsu.edu by March 1, 2018. In addition, nominators should also request copies of the book from the publishers to be sent to all four committee members. Nominations and books should be received no later than March 1, 2018.

​Youth suicide is never far from the American imagination. It is featured regularly in sensationalistic media coverage, as well as in books, plays, movies, and TV shows. In some ways, suicide occupies a similar space in the sociological imagination. Durkheim’s Suicide was one of the foundational texts of our discipline, and his influence, on sociology and the scientific study of suicide (or “suicidology”), is still recognized today; particularly, Durkheim’s insight that suicide is deeply tied to social isolation. Yet, at the same time, since 1980, sociologists have contributed dramatically fewer papers on suicide than nearly every other discipline, essentially ceding knowledge construction to psychology, psychiatry, and epidemiology. Perhaps more importantly, when we do contribute knowledge, we are largely re-testing Durkheim’s theses rather than pushing analyses forward by (1) drawing on our diverse methodological and theoretical toolkit and (2) focusing on the social problems of today, rather than those from Durkheim’s era.

Nowhere is the lack of a sociological perspective on suicide more problematic than when considering suicide among children and youth. First, suicide among youth represents a major social problem. Though the rise in suicide deaths among middle-aged white men has received substantial attention, the group with the second largest increase in suicide is youth ages 10-25. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 1999 to 2014, suicide has increased about 200 percent among girls ages 10-14 and 36 percent among boys ages 10-14. Youth ages 15-24 are also demonstrating substantial and significant increases in suicide. Among girls ages 15-24, the rate has increased approximately 53 percent since 1999; among boys ages 15-24, the increase is smaller (only 8 percent), but still statistically significant. To drive home the magnitude of these changes, according to a CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from August 2017, the suicide rate for females ages 15-19 is now at a 40-year high. On top of these trends by gender, Native American and Alaska Native youth ages 15-34 have one of the highest suicide rates in the U.S. (31 per 100,000 according to the CDC, using 2012 data), which is 2.5 times higher than the national average for that age group.

​Though rates of suicide ideation, plans and attempts (also called “suicidality”) have not changed as dramatically as rates of suicide deaths (an interesting trend in and of itself), a brief review reveals that though suicide deaths are rare, suicidality is not. For example, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey of U.S. high school students, 25.6 percent of Latina girls, 22.8 percent of white girls, and 18.7 percent of black girls seriously contemplated suicide in the past 12 months. Latina girls also have the highest prevalence of suicide attempts with 15 percent reporting a suicide attempt in the past year, compared to 9.8 percent of white girls and 10.2 percent of black girls. Though in the U.S., boys report suicidality at lower rates than girls (and have suicide deaths at higher rates), a sizeable minority of boys report suicide ideation (around 12 percent), with much less variation between race/ethnic groups. Additionally, research indicates that suicide is more prevalent in disadvantaged neighborhoods and among poor youth. These demographics clearly indicate that suicide is an important social problem among youth that warrants sociological attention.

​The second reason that youth suicide warrants more research attention from sociologists is that social forces likely play a particularly important role because of youth’s developmental sensitivity to social pressures. Indeed, many of the top concerns around suicide in youth involve inherently social experiences. In addition to concerns about suicide clusters or suicide diffusion, substantial attention is being paid to the roles of social media and bullying in youth suicide and to TV shows like 13 Reasons Why. And yet, research has barely scratched the surface of how and why these social forces may matter. With regard to shows like 13 Reasons Why, many suicidologists and psychologists have cautioned that the show could encourage suicide as an option for youth, but in truth, very little empirical research explicitly examines how exposure to suicide via salient role models shapes youth’s vulnerability to suicide. (For my take on 13 Reasons Why, check out this essay.)

This is where my own work, with my colleague Dr. Seth Abrutyn (University of British Columbia) comes in. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the goal of our research is to better understand how youth cope with and make sense of suicide after exposure to the suicide death or attempt of a classmate or friend. In brief, we have found that exposure to suicide can change whether youth see suicide as a justifiable action that someone like them might do to escape a certain set of circumstances. We also find clear evidence that suicide in adolescence has social roots.

In our qualitative case study of a community with a substantial and enduring suicide problem including repeated suicide clusters, we illustrate how social pressures amplify youth’s misery and diminish their willingness to seek help for their psychological pain. When combined with repeated exposure to the suicides of classmates, this ultimately reifies suicide as an option, or perhaps as the option, for escape.

Undoubtedly, the causes of suicide are complex and multifaceted and involve the intermingling of biological, social, environmental, and psychological risk and protective factors. But sociology is uniquely situated to shed light on how social forces and environmental factors condition biological risk, cause psychological pain, and ultimately shape suicide. As such, it is imperative that sociologists, and particularly sociologists of children and youth, return to studying this important and pressing social problem.

Anna S. Mueller is a sociologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development and the College at the University of Chicago. Her research on adolescent suicide won the Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Awards from the Section on Children & Youth in 2015 and 2017. For more about her research, visit www.annasmueller.com

Our “Meet the Graduate Student” interview for the upcoming Spring 2017 Sociology of Children and Youth (CY) newsletter is with Stephanie Canizales, a PhD Candidate at the University of Southern California. Stephanie is the daughter of Salvadoran refugees who arrived in Los Angeles, California as unaccompanied minors. Her research areas include international migration, migrant youth incorporation, unaccompanied minors, and illegality. Stephanie’s on-going dissertation work examines the unaccompanied migration and integration experiences of unauthorized, unaccompanied Latino immigrant youth in Los Angeles. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Haynes Foundation, ASA Minority Fellowship Program, and more recently, the Ford Foundation. Findings from this research have been published by Ethnic and Racial Studies, Youth Circulations, the Conversation, and in various policy reports. Stephanie will be finalizing her dissertation, entitled Finding Home, during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Ann: You study child migrants, including unaccompanied child migrants. How and why did this become a research interest for you?

Stephanie: I was really involved in the LA immigrant youth movement in the years leading up to starting graduate school. I planned to spend my graduate years studying undocumented student support groups. During my first year, my advisor sent me off to “learn the landscape of Los Angeles” before starting fieldwork, which simultaneously seems vague and specific. I really had no idea what that meant, so I did it all. I tried to get as plugged in with different immigrant youth advocacy and support groups as possible.

My introduction to the unaccompanied migrant youth population in Los Angeles was that summer, when I began observing and participating in an informal support group for unaccompanied Guatemalan youth who came to the U.S., and Los Angeles specifically, looking for work to support their impoverished families abroad. These youth work predominately in the garment industry and are exposed to extreme forms of exploitation and violence in the workplace, including wage theft, denial of breaks, being locked in during work hours without proper lighting and ventilation, and the like.

Having only known of the undocumented immigrant student or adult worker narrative up until that summer, I was immediately stirred by the stories these youth workers shared. The term ‘unaccompanied’ brings to mind a different image in 2017 than it did back in 2012, when I first started to work with these youth who not only migrated alone but continue to live alone. This group is unaccompanied in the truest sense. They have come of age in the U.S. without a parent or guardian. In fact, they work to support their families that remain in their home country. As young adults, they are stuck in limbo. They do not qualify for Deferred Action because they have not saved documentation proving their arrival date or that they have been in the U.S. consistently since their arrival as minors (something that parents typically do). And they are now too old to receive the services that contemporary child migrants have access to. They have come of age completely invisible, but contributing to the U.S. economy through their labor in the garment industry or domestic work, and to civil society through their participation in churches, youth groups, community gardens, etc. Aside from all of this, I continue to be interested in the lives of unaccompanied child migrants because it is my own family history. I grew up not knowing the details of my parents’ migration stories. After about a year and half of fieldwork, when I would share my respondents’ stories with my family, my parents slowly started to open up about their childhoods and first years in the U.S. I learned that my dad arrived in Los Angeles at 17 and immediately began working in the garment industry to support himself. He proudly talks about sewing labels onto Guess jeans just after the question mark logo was created. My mother arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 9, and she bounced around between relatives and acquaintances, never really feeling safe or welcomed. I didn't know any of this when I started my research in 2012, but it inspires me daily.

Ann: What can you tell me about your dissertation?

Stephanie: Finding Home gives a glimpse into the lives of the thousands of unaccompanied Latino youth who enter the U.S. without documentation, many of whom remain “unparented,” and live without a biological parent. Contemporary assimilation theories use parents’ background to predict youth’s socioeconomic outcomes, but we know little about how immigrant youth construct social worlds and incorporate into a new land without parents. Finding Home draws on four years of participant observation and in-depth interviews to understand the ways undocumented, unparented Central American and Mexican migrants experience incorporation. I examine patterns of participation in school, work, family, and community—sites of interaction among immigrants and the host society— among three groups of unparented young people: 1) youth with supportive non-parent relative(s), 2) youth without relatives but with supportive mentor(s), and 3) youth bereft of support. I trace the ways undocumented, unparented immigrant youth navigate financial, political, and social insecurity as they settle in the U.S.

Finding Home contributes to scholarship by investigating how immigrant youth without parents to guide their incorporation access familial and community resources to navigate financial, social, and health instability and participate in U.S. society. I argue that unparented youth strategically patchwork their financial, social, and emotional capital to achieve stability, and counter marginalization by developing narratives around overcoming trauma, giving back practices, and transregional citizenship. Rather than draw on traditional socioeconomic markers of incorporation, I find that unparented migrant youth are remaking the meanings of belonging to include personal narratives of success. This study provides a window to examine how unaccompanied migrant youth fare in U.S. society. The incorporation of undocumented young people who arrived as unaccompanied minor migrants is pressing given current debates on immigration reform and the socioeconomic mobility of the Latino population, as well as the increased migration and displacement of children.

I am so excited and very fortunate to have received a Ford Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year and will be focusing on writing the dissertation over the next year.

Ann: You are on Twitter and write a blog. How has being on social media in these ways affected you as a scholar? What advice do you have for other children and youth scholars who would like to engage in social media?

Stephanie: When I first joined Twitter, I intended to use it to keep up with the work of others. Twitter is an especially great way to stay in the loop with my favorite scholars, news outlets, and join conversations around policies or events. Most publishers, university departments, faculty and graduate students, community organizations, and public figures have Twitter accounts. When you get a together a strong network of accounts to follow, Twitter can be a great information hub and a platform to engage with others. Over the years, social media has become one of my favorite ways to share my own writing and articles related to my own research. When I post a new report or article it's great to see it be shared, retweeted, favorited a few times. I know I’m reaching at least a handful of folks.

My website is ever-evolving. I was not sure what my website was for when I first published it. I thought it important to reserve the URL during my first year in graduate school with the hope that one day StephanieCanizales(dot)com would have some significance—a first-year graduate student’s dream. Now my website serves as a sort of center for my publications, stories my work is featured in, a public CV, and projects and stories related to the work that I do. It really is incredible to see the traffic on my site after my research is mentioned in a report or news story, or after I give a talk somewhere. It is a great way to track what people are most interested in (by tracking the pages that are clicked and shared the most). I have also gotten a few emails over the past two years from people outside of academia who have reached out because of a story they read or simply to thank me for the resource. I love that!

I think sharing my work and that of others that is at least tangentially related to my own is important for contextualizing my research for the public and giving a sense of not only the work that I do but also why it is important. If a news story is released about unaccompanied minors that it is being widely shared on Facebook, the LA Times writes a story about Guatemalan youth labor, or NPR releases a segment on Central American migration, I share the story on my website and give a brief reflection on how my research relates to that story.

Connecting research to the public conversation and vice versa is one of my priorities when it comes research. I have really appreciated being able to connect with community organizations or advocacy groups through Twitter and linking them to reports or essays I’ve written, or those written by others, that might be useful for the work these organizations are doing. For example, I recently had an essay published by the Conversation and because the link was shared so widely via Twitter, Facebook, and other outlets my article Ethnic and Racial Studies article was made open access. I can now re-share the article and reach more people.

Some quick advice about using social media: With increasing connectivity and evolving social networks I think it is important for scholars, especially graduate students and those of us going on the job market, to be mindful of what we are uploading onto social media. I am the first to say I have a personal Twitter account that is private and what I tell my friends is my “professor” account that is searchable. I tell all incoming first years in my department to be aware of who their audience is when uploading status updates, photos, memes, etc. on Twitter, Facebook, or any other outlet. Of course, be yourself! But also be aware that Google knows all and everything is searchable.

Finally, having a consistent image for profiles and bios is really useful for being recognized in academic settings. This is something I noticed about scholars I am connected withthrough Facebook who are going on book tours, giving lectures, winning awards, and publishing in public news outlets. These people tend to use one image on most, if not all, websites and flyers. Having a consistent image (that isn’t a selfie with a sepia tone filter) goes a long way for graduate students looking to create a recognizable public image. Just last summer, I was at a Starbucks near the ASA conference venue and someone came up to me in line and said, “Hi, you’re Stephanie, right? I recognized you from your website.” Now, the trick is being up-to-date enough with other people’s websites to say, “Oh, hey, [person on a future job search committee]!”

Ann: Do you have any hobbies or other interests that you would like to share with the Children and Youth newsletter readers?

Stephanie: You mean besides research, writing, and teaching?

Being born and raised in Southern California, I love anything that gets me out by the ocean. Add a dog or two? Even better.

I’ve only recently started to be intent about having a work-life balance. And honestly, it’s much easier said than done! As I’ve moved out of the field and into writing, it seems even harder to break away and not feel guilt or pressure to get back to work. A few months back, I completed a 14-day writing challenge through the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity and much to my surprise each participant had to say what they rewarded themselves with after meeting their writing goal for the day. I found that the most rewarding things I could do were those that made me slow down and be present. Over the past few months, my favorites have been yoga and dog walking. I’m a novice on a yoga mat, but it really is relaxing and breaks me away from the office chair. I’ve started listening to audiobooks while dog walking, which I feel gets my creativity flowing and helps my storytelling when I sit back down to write. I’d love to hear what other people do to break up their work schedules!

Our “Meet the Scholar” interview for the upcoming Spring 2017 Sociology of Children and Youth (CY) newsletter is with Kate Henley Averett. Kate is an assistant professor of sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where she teaches courses in gender and sexuality, race/class/gender, and family. Kate's research falls generally within the areas of gender, sexuality, childhood, education, and the family. She is broadly interested in how gender and sexuality, as social institutions, shape experiences of childhood and parenting. Kate received her B.A. in Religion from Mount Holyoke College in 2004, her M.Div from Harvard University in 2008, and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016.

Ann: Your initial academic training was in religion—you have a B.A. in religion and an MDiv. How did you end up as a sociologist studying children? Have your religious studies informed your research on children? If so, how?

Kate: I started college as a math major, but realized pretty early on that I was enjoying the electives I was taking in the religion department at Mount Holyoke a lot more than my math classes, so I ended up majoring in religion and minoring in math. After college, I worked as a youth minister for a year before going to Harvard for my M.Div. At the time, I didn’t think I wanted to pursue a career in academia – I saw myself doing some sort of work with LGBTQ youth in a non-profit or educational setting. But I took a course during my first year called “The Spirituality of LGBT Youth” that really piqued my interest in the academic study of children and youth. By the time I finished my M.Div, I was pretty sure that I wanted to continue in academia, but I found myself frustrated with what I perceived as a lack of consensus around methodology in the study of religion. I took a couple of years off, working as a nanny and reading voraciously, and once I realized that what I was most enjoying reading was works by qualitative sociologists, I decided – having never taken a single sociology course! – to apply for doctoral programs in sociology. I started working on my PhD in sociology in the fall of 2010 at the University of Texas at Austin.

The book that was most influential in my making this decision was C.J. Pascoe’s Dude, You’re a Fag. I was drawn to Pascoe’s analysis of the institutional factors that shaped how masculinity played out on an interactional level at the school where she did her fieldwork. I found myself wondering how these institutional practices might look different in religious schools, especially those with conservative teachings on gender and sexuality, and how that added layer of religious doctrine might influence how students experience and enact gender and sexuality. When I applied to doctoral programs in sociology, this was the project that I proposed undertaking. While this isn’t the dissertation project I ended up doing, my religious study has definitely still informed my research, more broadly by making me attuned to how the cultural beliefs and practices of parents influence their child-rearing practices, and more specifically in my research on the homeschooling movement. While homeschooling has always served as a container for multiple ideological perspectives and has grown more diverse of late, there are still a large number of families who undertake the practice because they see their religious beliefs as incompatible with public education.

Ann: Can you tell me about the book you are writing based on your dissertation research on the homeschooling movement?

Kate: My dissertation was a mixed-methods examination of the homeschooling movement, for which I surveyed over 650 homeschooling parents, conducted in-depth interviews with 46 of these parents across different religious and political beliefs, and attended multiple homeschooling conferences and conventions as a participant observer. I’m currently writing a book based on this research, in which I argue that the homeschooling movement – particularly, its growth in popularity and acceptability in the last decade – can be understood as the product of two interrelated social trends: increased polarization of views on childhood gender and sexuality, and neoliberal education reform, including increased acceptance among parents of the rhetoric of school choice. The book illuminates some of the competing discourses about children and youth currently circulating in the United States, and I argue that these discourses, which represent very different ways of understanding what childhood is, what children need, and who can best provide it, can help us understand a lot about larger debates about childhood and education. I’m currently in the process of writing the manuscript and preparing to send my book proposal to editors. I’m really excited about the book, in part because I think it will be of interest to sociologists in a wide range of sub-disciplines, including children and youth, gender, sexuality, family, education, and religion.

Ann: What research on children will you conduct once your book is done?

Kate: I have a few projects in mind that should keep me occupied for at least the next 10 years! The research I’m planning on working on next, however, is a project that builds upon my homeschooling research in some interesting ways. One of the reasons I was drawn to study homeschooling in the first place was because of what I saw as an increase in rhetoric about homeschooling as a possible individual-level solution to bullying, particularly gender- and sexuality-based bullying. One of the questions I asked the homeschooling parents that I interviewed for my current project was about the peer dynamics of homeschooled children, and how they saw them being similar to, or different from, peer dynamics in schools. One of the really interesting themes that came up repeatedly in these interviews was the belief that the structure of contemporary public schooling – its compulsory nature, clear adult/child hierarchy, age segregation, and the strict rules required for one teacher to maintain order in a classroom of 20-30 students – contributes to the culture of bullying in schools. This led me to wonder what peer relationships look like in schools that are structured differently, particularly those in which children have more choice in what they do in school. In the next year, I am hoping to begin laying the groundwork for an ethnographic study of peer relationships in a school or schools that use a democratic or free-school model. In these schools, children are not segregated by age, and students have decision-making power both in the running of the school more generally and in what they learn and do on any given day. I want to know, are there major differences in how students interact in these settings, given a very different structural environment?

Ann: You just finished your first year as an assistant professor. How did it go? What advice do you have for members of the CY section who will be starting assistant professor positions in the fall?

Kate: Overall, my first year as an assistant professor went really well, despite some early landlord issues that resulted in moving twice in two months (which I don’t recommend doing)! I’m really grateful to my new colleagues in the sociology department at the University at Albany, SUNY for making the transition from graduate student to faculty go as smoothly as it did. I would say the hardest part – which I didn’t fully anticipate – was how different it was to teach at a different institution. While there are ways in which my students at UAlbany are very similar to my students at UT Austin, there are other ways in which they differ. One piece of advice I have for those starting assistant professor positions, then, is to talk to various people at your new institution about the undergraduate culture at the institution, and to get advice on the particularities of the student body you’ll be teaching. A related piece of advice is to establish mentoring relationships, whether formal or informal, with multiple faculty members in your department. And finally, don’t underestimate the importance of relationships of support from other new faculty members. I was really lucky to be one of three new faculty in my department this year, and we’ve figured out various ways to support each other, from getting together to write, to sharing bits of information about the often-confusing university bureaucracy, to spending time together socially with our spouses/partners. I’ve also kept in close touch with some of my cohort-mates from UT who are also new faculty, working on post-docs, or finishing up their dissertations. We “meet” via Skype once or twice a month to check in and workshop things we’re working on, and it’s been really helpful having that support from people who know me, and my work, really well.

​Ann: Do you have any hobbies or other interests that you would like to share with the Children and Youth newsletter readers?

Kate: One of the best things about moving back to the Northeast has been being close to my family. I like to spend as much time as possible with my siblings and my nieces and nephews, who are spread out across New England. I’ve also, for reasons that are probably self-evident, become more of a politics junkie in the past year than I had ever imagined I would – I’ve actually willingly watched CSPAN on more than one occasion in the last few months. I also really enjoy reading fiction, especially mysteries/thrillers, though I’ve been on a major dystopian fiction kick lately (probably for similar reasons to the newfound political obsession).

​Hyeyoung Kwon is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research areas include race, migration, and social inequalities. She is currently working on a book titled Translating Race, Class, and Immigrant Lives: The Language Brokering Work of Bilingual Youth, which examines the experiences of Mexican- and Korean-Americans who grew up translating for their non-English speaking parents and explores how migration and racialization processes impact the lives of working-class immigrant families. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. Her works have been published in Social Problems, Journal of Ethnic andMigration Studies, and Childhood.

Ann: How did you first become interested in studying children in immigrant families?

Hyeyoung: My inspiration for studying the lives of children in immigrant families developed from my own personal experiences. Growing up, I shouldered significant responsibilities of helping my Korean monolingual, working-class parents navigate institutions and social inequality by serving as their “language broker.” My parents relied on my bilingual skills when speaking with doctors, teachers, social workers, landlords, and other English-speaking adults. From this, I wanted to use my personal experiences as a starting point to examine how migration impacts the daily lives of children in immigrant families and how race, class, and gender shape the types of work that these children perform for their families and within the larger society.

Ann: Can you tell us a little about your current book manuscript, Translating Race, Class, and Immigrant Lives: The Language Brokering Work of Bilingual Youth?

Hyeyoung: Drawing from in-depth interviews and ethnography, Translating Class, Race, and Immigrant Lives takes readers into the daily lives of Mexican- and Korean-American “language brokers” who use their bilingual knowledge to navigate English-speaking institutions on behalf of their parents. Today, nearly a quarter of U.S. children have at least one immigrant parent, and nearly two-thirds of these children’s parents have difficulty speaking English. Among children with a parent from Korea or Mexico, a respective 76 and 81 percent of such children have a parent with limited English proficiency. Although many children grow up mediating a variety of interactions and serve as liaisons of communication, their brokering work remains understudied and undertheorized in the field of sociology. Addressing this gap, my book traces racialized and classed encounters, ranging from interactions with landlords to life-threatening situations involving health care access and police protection. I find that translating encapsulates far more than verbal exchanges. For working-class immigrant youth, whose lives are marginalized by multiple forms of inequality, translating means using a simultaneously elevated and subordinated status as a bilingual speaker to challenge the imposed categories of class, race, and gender in an effort to ensure family survival. It is also about creatively blurring the boundary between “adulthood” and “childhood” in an attempt to present their working-class, non-English speaking parents—who are often stereotyped as inassimilable and undeserving free-riders of social welfare systems—as “normal” Americans deserving of full citizenship rights. Based on my findings, I move beyond the long standing assimilation paradigm, which overlooks children’s agency and the impact of everyday interactions in reproducing social inequality. Instead, I synthesize the theories of intersectionality, symbolic interactionism, and sociology of childhood, demonstrating how marginalized immigrant youth enact and contest normative understandings of “Americanness” in everyday life. In a socio-historical moment where immigrants of color are depicted as threats to the economic stability of “true” Americans, my book will offer a much needed critique of American culture, exposing the contradictions between the ideal of equality and the actual practices of race, class, and language-based exclusion.

Ann: What advice do you have for others who are interested in studying children in immigrant families?

Hyeyoung: I have three pieces of advice. First, I suggest extending the analysis beyond the dominant theory of assimilation. Scholars studying immigrant children largely focus on how they assimilate into the U.S. mainstream and become “American.” But while this is an important sociological question, assimilation theory overlooks the way in which children, as active social agents, resist social inequality daily and how these children’s actions reproduce and challenge existing social hierarchies. In other words, scholars should ask different research questions and develop new theories to highlight the precarious status of many immigrant youths in a so-called nation of immigrants. For working-class immigrant youth, whose lives are marginalized by multiple forms of inequality, translating means using a simultaneously elevated and subordinated status as a bilingual speaker to challenge the imposed categories of class, race, and gender in an effort to ensure family survival.

Second, although sociologists of childhood such as William Corsaro, Berry Thorne, and Allison Pugh, among others, have argued that children are not passive recipients of adult values, immigrant scholarship tends to take an adult-centric view and undermine the critical role children and young people play in changing the harsh realities in their own households and the broader society. Although parents influence their children’s lives significantly, children and youths also shoulder important responsibilities and often change the intergenerational dynamics of their families. This is especially true of children of immigrants, who often learn English faster than their parents and navigate multiple inequalities in the name of “family.” Accordingly, I encourage scholars of immigrant children to focus on those children’s work, with particular attention to how their struggles are interconnected with multiple social inequalities.

Finally, I suggest that scholars take competing dominant ideologies seriously and move away from essentializing ethnic culture. As cultural sociologists remind us, there are many forms of cultures in the U.S. For example, there are multiple youth cultures, which vary greatly by social class, gender, and race. Likewise, immigrant youths do not draw on a singular and static “ethnic culture”; rather, they use multiple and competing cultural scripts to make sense of their lives. In short, there are many theoretical lenses scholars studying children of immigrants can use to develop innovative questions; sociology of childhood, intersectionality, social and cultural citizenship, emotion work, and symbolic interactionalism are important theories that I’ve found useful in analyzing the struggles that children of immigrants endure in their daily lives and highlighting these children’s agency. Children of immigrants, like any children, are resilient; they respond to exclusion every day, resist social inequalities in creative ways, and contest the dominant meaning of “American.” We need new theories, creative methods, and empirical findings to document this process.

Ann: What has your experience as a postdoctoral fellow been like? What advice do you have for Children and Youth (CY) section graduate students who are interested in postdoctoral fellowships?

Hyeyoung: A postdoctoral fellowship is a great way to start a career in academia, especially if you need time to revise your dissertation project into a monograph. The postdoc at Indiana University’s Center for Research in Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) and sociology department gave me the opportunity to connect with colleagues both inside and outside the university who were conducting innovative research on inequality and social justice; it also provided me with the time to develop my book manuscript further.

I’d give this advice to graduate students interested in postdoctoral fellowships. First, identify your fellowship opportunities early in your graduate career. Next, foster relationships with potential postdoctoral mentors who can provide information about their programs. Some postdoctoral fellowships explicitly ask applicants to identify sponsors, so it’s important to connect with people who are affiliated with the programs. Third, give yourself ample time to develop your proposals; postdoctoral fellowship applications often look different from tenure-track position applications. And as with any good writing intended to convince the readers—in this case the fellowship committee—it takes time. Starting on the application materials early also lets you solicit feedback from colleagues and mentors. As we all know, nobody writes alone, and it’s critical for all of us to a foster supportive intellectual community and develop relationships with colleagues who can provide honest and critical feedback on our postdoctoral applications (and any other writings). It’s a lot of work, but the payoff is invaluable.

Ann: What projects are you looking forward to working on in the future?

Hyeyoung: In addition to my book, I am looking forward to developing articles that will examine how race, class, and gender intersect when shaping the emotion work performed by Mexican- and Korean-American language brokers. The goal is to highlight how the cultural image of the “good” immigrant reverberates in the family lives of working-class young people. I am also looking forward to co-authoring an article with Michela Musto and proposing a new methodological strategy to enable scholars to reveal the impact of unmarked categories such as whiteness and masculinity when conducting interviews with children. Finally, my next big project will examine the connection between micro interactions to larger economic forces of globalization through a multi-sited ethnographic study of transnational families.

The Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development (JC) was established in 2003 as a joint venture between the University of Zurich and the Jacobs Foundation. It is currently undergoing a major expansion. From 2003 to 2015, Prof. Marlis Buchmann served as the Director and also established COCON (COmpetence and CONtext), a nationally representative study of Swiss youth. The Jacobs Foundation and the University of Zurich began a considerable expansion of the JC in 2015 with 70 million Swiss Francs committed over the next 20 years.

This expansion is dedicated to transforming the JC to an interdisciplinary platform for youth research. To this end, the Center has recently made three new hires: (1) economist Prof. Hannes Schwandt, who studies health economics, including the role of in utero conditions in life attainments; (2) psychologist Prof. Lilly Shanahan, Chair of Clinical Developmental Psychology, who studies stress, developmental psychopathology, health, sex differences, and substance abuse; and (3) myself, Chair of the Sociology of Child and Youth Development and new director of the JC, who studies social context and gene expression. Additional searches in Economics and Psychology are underway. As the final professorships are filled, the Center’s budget provides for a research project that will be jointly designed and implemented by all professors.

One core idea driving the Center’s activities is the collection of long-term longitudinal data that joins social, economic, psychological, and biological levels of analysis. Two existing projects are especially noteworthy. First, COCON studies youth development from a life course perspective, focusing on important developmental tasks such as school entry and the transition to secondary schooling. The study’s major aim is to provide empirical evidence of what promotes and what impairs coping with early life course transitions. COCON includes three nationally representative cohorts, surveyed since 2006, including a child cohort (6-years old at intake, last assessed at age 16; N=1273), a youth cohort (15-years old at intake, last assessed at age 21; N=1258), and a young adult cohort (21-years old at intake; N=584). To grasp young people’s family and school contexts, their primary caregiver and teacher were also surveyed. As part of the expansion of the Center, a new wave of data collection has been funded, extending the child cohort to age 18.

Second, the Jacobs Center is also now home to the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso), a prospective longitudinal study of the long-term development of violent, delinquent and other problem behaviors in the city of Zurich. The study is directed by Prof. Manuel Eisner of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge and co-directed by Dr. Denis Ribeaud at the JC. The target sample consists of 1675 children who entered a public school in 2004 and is highly multiethnic, with more than 50% of the primary caregivers born outside Switzerland in over 70 different countries. The first three years of the study also included a randomized experiment with two early prevention programs: the Triple P parenting program and the classroom-based PATHS social skills program. To date, seven main data collections have been completed with the children and their teacher, spanning ages 7 to 17. In addition, from ages 7 to 11 the study also comprised four standardized parent interviews conducted in ten different languages. The next interview wave is scheduled in 2018 at age 20, with plans to collect additional data, including an experience-sampling module, hair samples, and gene expression.

Overall, the expanded Center is becoming a hub for international and interdisciplinary activities that advance the study of child and youth development. We presently sponsor a seminar series on genetics and social sciences. This summer, we are co-sponsoring the Summer School on Longitudinal and Life Course Research, and we have convened a workshop on gene expression data in Add Health. We also anticipate new training initiatives, a visiting scholars program, and an ongoing research seminar featuring international scholars whose work enriches the Center’s research. Above all, the Center strives to embody the new science of youth, breaking barriers among disciplines to facilitate long-term research—made possible by our unique 20-year funding plan—that draws from the scientific toolkits of many areas of study. Importantly, the goal of the JC is ultimately practical: to improve the productive lives of young people through a mix of basic science and intervention.